Writing

In 2025, the then governor of New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen, contacts you. The Boss wants your advice on a recent drug epidemic spreading throughout his state. It originated when someone broke into a veterinary hospital located near where he grew up in Monmouth County, and stole a large quantity of ketamine, a drug that is frequently used as an anesthetic in veterinary medicine. This spiked use of the drug, and soon veterinary hospitals across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York were being broken into, leading to what has now become a thriving illicit marketplace for ketamine, and the first drug epidemic to make national news since the opioid/opiate epidemic of the early and mid twenty-tens.

 

Bruce’s staffers have constructed a series of questions that they’d like your expert opinion on before they decide how they’ll approach this problem. In order to provide a complete but succinct answer (The Boss is a busy man), his staffers have asked that you answer each question in about a paragraph or two. (NOTE: Make sure you define any key terms you use; don’t expect Bruce or his staffers to know the proper definition for any drug-related jargon).

 

Be sure you rely on material from this course for your answers, and while you do not need to make official APA citations, please note where you are getting your information (e.g, textbook, lecture, additional material). Each question is worth 20 points.

 

1. What are the short and long-term physical effects of ketamine and drugs like ketamine? Could you compare these effects to a different drug that the U.S. has had trouble with in the past?

2. Governor Springsteen would like to get a better sense of why people are using this drug, why they become addicted to it, and why they sell it so that he can tailor his response to these reasons. In your expert opinion, what are two or three of the most compelling explanations for this behavior?

3. Much is being made about the connection between ketamine and other crime. Based on evidence about the connection between drugs and crime in previous drug epidemics, what do think Governor Springsteen should believe in terms of a drug-crime connection? Why?

4. If there were a connection between ketamine and other crime, what are some of the ways that it’s likely to occur? Meaning, why is (if it is) ketamine causing crime? Among those reasons, what is your opinion about which may be the leading reason, and why?

5. Please give us some historical perspective. What has been done in the past to deal with drug issues, and what do you think we should learn from that? Obviously, you don’t need to give us the whole history of drugs in the U.S., but tell us about two or three important issues/events and how they can help us sort through this problem.